Sie gut_." The market-place had been dismantled
of its stalls and umbrellas all but one, which was being furled as we
arrived on the scene. A couple of men in blue smocks were sweeping up
the cabbage leaves, straw and refuse, market carts were driving off,
and smart-looking officers in beautiful uniforms strolled across what
we English miscall "a square" for want of a better word.

But to get a good view of the exterior of the cathedral was what we
wanted, and to this end we dived down strange, evil-smelling alleys,
and went round and round a labyrinth of streets, always expecting to
see, and never arriving at, the cathedral's facade. At last we
realised that the quest was hopeless, since the building is so
surrounded and deformed by commonplace, ugly houses that nothing of it
but roof and towers can be seen from outside. We entered it at last by
a narrow lane between poor, ugly houses, an unfit approach indeed to
this beautiful Romanesque cathedral--one of the four famous Romanesque
Gothic cathedrals of Germany. The general effect of the interior is
that of strength, solidity, and simplicity. The grand structural lines
are noble and pure. There is an entire absence of the florid in
architecture, and no attempt at all at decoration as one understands
it in Spanish cathedrals. The tone of the walls and floor is a pinkish
brown, and the whole church has a warm glowing effect from its
richly-coloured stone. I could have spared most, if not all, of the
overladen rococo monuments to the Electors of Mainz, with their
monstrous records of impossible perfections; but my companion (a
German lady) thought them beautiful. The whole church struck one as
rather ill-kept; perhaps the red stone floor had something to do with
it. Dust and mud do not adhere somehow to an opus Alexandrinum
pavement. A guide appeared to offer his services, almost obsequiously
polite in his attentions to the English lady. Whatever their opinions
may be as to our failings and vices, our shortcomings and our
iniquities, most Germans are civil to us nowadays.[3] They hate us
cordially, envy us sincerely, attack us in the press and out of it,
and are insanely jealous of the people they affect to despise. But
while the superficial _entente_ lasts, they smile and bow and are
outwardly polite. I asked an English lady, the widow of a German
official, if her husband, having married an English wife, did not
cherish kindlier sentiments towards us than the majority o